Redundancy Enhancements

NCC are still attempting to cut the redundancy enhancements available to employees. UNISON have provided a spreadsheet to help you understand what the proposed cuts would mean to you. To calculate any redundancy pay you need to enter your age, length of service and gross annual salary (your salary before tax). The redundancy date is the date you'd like a calculation for, so for example if you'd like to know what your redundancy pay would be if you were made redundant on 1st April 2011, fill in the other details and use 01/04/2011 as your redundancy date. The calculation is based on full time salaries so if you work part time you will have to do a pro rata calculation for an exact figure.

Click here to use the spreadsheet.

65% of respondents voted YES for industrial action to oppose NCC's proposal to cut redundancy pay. When confronted with this, Councillors agreed not to impose the cuts onto the workforce, but to mandate officers to try and negotiate an outcome with UNISON.

Whilst these talks are on-going, the Branch will not proceed with seeking authorisation from UNISON to conduct a full industrial action ballot. However, if an agreement cannot be negotiated that is acceptable to our members we will make such a request.

Why are the cuts unreasonable?

* It would make NCC's redundancy enhancements the equal worst of Norfolk local authorities- is that the way to treat staff who have made it the best performing authority?

* NCC are saying financial pressures are behind their proposals but they have provided no information as to why they think the current redundancy package is too costly, or how much they think their proposal will save. There has been no budget planning behind the proposal which means in UNISON's view it is driven by ideology, not economics.

* The best way to keep redundancy costs down is NOT to make staff redundant. Despite the best efforts of HR the redeployment process is still under resourced, and opportunities to avoid redundancies are missed.

* Officers are quoting the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) as leading to savage cuts, but at the recent JCNC County Councillors agreed it was dangerous to make policy decisions before the scale of any funding problem is known.... unless, it seems, you want to make life even harder for dedicated staff you are about to sack on the grounds of redundancy!

* The CSR will focus mainly on revenue (on-going) expenditure. Redundancy payments are one-off costs and currently NCC's balances are well above the level recommended by their own auditors, so NCC would be well placed to to fund enhanced redundancies if they were to occur.

* Redundancy pay is enhanced in two ways. The NCC proposal will mean workers earning less than £20,000 per year will, if made redundant, receive NO enhancement at all. Those earning more will still receive an enhancement because redundancy will still be calculated on actual weekly pay and not the £380 statutory minimum, so if you earn more than this you will still receive an enhancement. If your pay is below this level your employer has no choice but to pay your actual salary.

* The PCS union fought off the Governments proposal to cut their redundancy enhancements by unified industrial action. WHY SHOULD LOCAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS BE TARGETED?

UNISON telling Councillors 65% of respondents were prepared to take industrial action resulted in them agreeing to talks. If these talks do not lead to a positive outcome we need all our membership to take industrial action; not just 65% of the 20% that responded.

Any industrial action has to be apporved by our Branch Executive, supported by UNISON regionally and then agreed by the National Industrial Action Committee. We have to demonstrate that our members will support action and that the 80% who didn't vote will act to defend their redundancy entitlement.

To get NCC to come up with an acceptable offer may well require industrial action. This will be the dispute that will help define how the Big Con proposals go forward. If UNISON members are not prepared to vote for and then take industrial action, our protests over recommendations going to Council next year will carry less resonance. Please encourage any non-trade union member to join UNISON and strengthen our collective position in our campaign against swingeing cuts to redundancy enhancements and cuts to jobs and services out of the Big Con!

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